The House of Mourning
by KatieBell70
Summary: Charlie Weasley needs to feel useful. Perhaps there's someone out there that really needs him.Rated M for later chapters
1. Chapter 1

Charlie went to see her a few weeks after the funeral, her daughter's funeral, not his brother's. Those were the only two he'd had the time or the heart to attend, in spite of having decided to leave Romania—at least for a while—to tend to his family. He would think of her occasionally and wonder how she was faring, but then something would happen, another visitor offering condolences, or his mother asking him to perform some chore and the thought would slip from his mind. The real trouble was that he wasn't actually doing much for his family, simply because there wasn't much to do. They sat around, talking about things, occasionally skirting close to the issue of Fred, or the way that George seemed like an empty shell, but there wasn't much more to do other than shake your head at the senselessness of the whole thing.

Worse yet was when people came by to observe that he'd died a good death, died valiantly, bravely, died fighting, died laughing, and wasn't that the way he'd want to go? Which was really stupid because Charlie was quite sure that Fred wouldn't have _wanted_ to go at all. So he'd nod politely and make some inane remark while his parents dealt with it; they were much better at this sort of thing, anyway. But in trying to get those sorts of thoughts out of his head, occasionally his mind would turn back to the woman at Tonks' funeral. She'd borne little resemblance to the attractive, elegant, somewhat intimidating woman who always put spice cake on the tea tray whenever he visited Tonks over the summer simply because she remembered how much he'd enjoyed it the first time they met.

As a kid, he remembered wondering how she and Tonks could be related—they were so very different. But _this_ woman looked quite a bit like Tonks had the when he'd run into her two years before, pale and wan and defeated, though she certainly was clutching the bundle of blankets to her breast with a great deal of strength.

And there, Charlie later came to realize, was the resemblance: the courage to go on when it seemed impossible.

So, one day, when a particularly annoying Ministry sycophant came by with trite words about his father's loyal service over the years, Fred's sacrifice, and Merlin knew what else, Charlie had had enough. He found himself at Dora's front door, wishing he'd thought of what he was going to say and wishing he'd stopped long enough to put on a nicer shirt.

Andromeda opened the door herself, looking at him in confusion.

"Hullo, Mrs. Tonks, I'm sorry to bother you but…I just didn't get the chance to say hello at the…er-"

_Great, _he thought_. Bring up the funeral, why don't you? Do the very thing you were trying to escape from._ "How are you?" he asked, unable to think of anything else to say.

Andromeda stared at him incredulously, and he wondered how many times he or another family member had been asked that, with the asker probably hoping to hear that they were okay, thanks for asking, hadn't had their hearts ripped out of their chests, actually—allowing the asker to walk away and feel as if they'd done something good.

The thing was, though—it _was_ a sincere question, no matter how absurd the circumstances, and perhaps Andromeda sensed this, because she answered. "I'm—not well at all, actually. But I'm alive, and you're here, so why don't you come in for tea? I might even be able to dig up a bit of that spice cake you were so fond of, Charlie."

"I didn't mean to impose…" he started, but he stopped himself, suspecting the invitation was at least as sincere as his question had been.

Andromeda led him to the kitchen, offering him a seat on a stool at the counter, which only reinforced his suspicions. The kitchen was for _family_ where as the sitting room was for guests, he knew. As Tonks' friend, he had probably been somewhere in between.

She leaned against the spotless worktop as she waited for the pot to boil, looking him up and down and laughing under her breath. "It's hard for me to imagine you grown up, Charlie. I see you as that quiet little boy with the bottomless stomach and the cowlick."

Charlie reached back to pat down the back of his head in an involuntary gesture and grinned at her accurate assessment. "Yeah, I could eat, I'll give you that. Dunno where it all went, actually. I sure as hell didn't have that growth spurt everyone promised me I'd get."

Andromeda's eyebrow arched as her eyes darted to his arms and chest, and once again, Charlie wished he'd thought to put on a decent shirt. This one was worn and snug, and hardly appropriate for condolence calls, though he didn't want to call what he was doing here that. "Yeah, I suppose I grew the other way, didn't I?" he said, instantly regretting it. He was pants at polite conversation, really, but she simply smiled in response, her subsequent exhalation of breath a poor imitation of the hearty laughter he remembered.

And anyway, the only thing they had in common was Dora, and she was a tough subject to bring up, wasn't she? "So, I heard there was a baby."

This time, Andromeda's smile reached her eyes and Charlie realized that Dora had inherited her mother's eyes, too. "Yes, Teddy. He's napping now, so you've caught me at a good time. I was just cleaning."

Charlie had noticed the cleanliness of the house, even more so than when he had visited before. It had struck him as odd, considering that she was (essentially) a single parent with an infant. He'd wondered where she found the time. It was certainly a contrast to the Burrow, but he suspected that it was a matter of principles with Andromeda. Her world might crash around her shoulders, but cleanliness was a battle she _would_ win, even if it came (as seemed apparent in the circles under her eyes and the color of her skin) at the cost of her precious moments of rest.

He shook his head. "Hard for me to imagine Dora as someone's mum. I was just getting used to imagining her as someone's wife." And it was true—he'd seen her at the wedding, done the obligatory congratulations and tortured her by telling her new husband (a decent enough bloke, apparently, if a bit tweedy) silly stories about Dora's adventures at school—but in reality he'd found the whole thing surreal. It was strange enough for Bill to be getting married, but he wasn't quite ready for Tonks to be a grown-up.

Fuck it, he wasn't ready for her to be _dead,_ and he realized how stupid he must have sounded, referring to her in the present tense. He felt an urge to apologize, for his blunder, for Andromeda's losses, but it seemed a bit redundant. What the hell was he doing here, anyway?

"I was thinking," he said. "I mean, I'm sure you've got people coming here all the time, offering sympathy, offering casseroles, saying something like, 'if you ever need anything' though they know you're not really going to accept, right? It doesn't really _mean_ anything, does it? The thing is, though—I'm feeling strangled in that house. I'm used to _doing_ something all the time, and all they ever do is sit, and worse yet fuss over me. What we really need is a game of Quidditch or something to help us get the mad out of our systems, but that would be…well sort of disrespectful, maybe. So I was thinking—I mean, hell, I'm probably going to bollix this up and not say the right thing, but you'll have to bear in mind that I don't do as well with people as I do with animals. The way I see it, though, you're taking care of this baby and you're probably tired and sad and your husband is gone, and I was hoping—I don't know—maybe there was something you were putting off, like the roof was leaking or the fence needed repairing, or you need wood chopped up. I'm sick of feeling bloody useless, you know? Even if you just needed to take a nap, or a shower, and not have to be listening for the baby with one ear. I wasn't here when Dora needed a friend two years ago—my mum told me about it later—maybe I can do something for her now. I just…how the hell can she be _dead?_ I just don't get it, you know?

Charlie clenched his jaw and chanced a look at her. Her hand had halted on its way to the teapot and her eyes were suspiciously shiny.

"You don't have to…" she started, but he stopped her.

"_Please._ I'm going mental, I've got to _do_ something or I'm kill someone."

"_Oh._ Well…" she said, clearly struggling. "I think…come to think of it, I don't know if I got a proper shower today. Or yesterday for that matter. And of course you had several brothers, so I'm sure you'd know how to take care of him if he woke up?"

Charlie nodded.

"And then, if you really want to, I don't suppose I'd object to having the wood chopped and brought in. I haven't had a proper fire in ages; not since Remus was here."

She left the room some moments later, and after a time, Charlie heard the water running somewhere in the back of the house. He made himself comfortable in the kitchen, listening for the chime of that sensor Dora's husband had reportedly come up with to let them know if the baby was stirring. He ate the biscuits that Andromeda had set out after apologizing for the lack of spice cake. Afterwards, he wandered around the house for a bit, glancing over the old photographs of Dora and Ted. He hadn't known Tonks' dad nearly as well as he had her mother, but they'd got along all right once Ted realized that Charlie didn't have designs on his daughter.

He was expecting the baby to wake up any minute now, so he went to use the toilet, washing his hands afterwards. It was then that he noticed that the faucet wouldn't shut off completely no matter how far he turned it. This was the sort of thing he'd meant to do, so he crawled under the sink to turn off the valve beneath. Loosening the fixture with a spell, he took the faucet apart and repaired the gasket. Once he put it back together, the drip was gone, but he'd also noticed that there was a damp patch in the cabinet under the sink, meaning there was probably a leak there, too.

Grateful for a useful task, he was so wrapped up in what he was doing that he nearly crashed his head into the pipe above him when Andromeda came into the room.

"You certainly don't waste any time," she observed.

"Almost finished," he said in the general direction of her feet.

When he emerged, he noticed that her hair was slightly damp and combed away from her face. Her color had improved under the hot water, her face was pink and freshly scrubbed and the effect had taken years off her face. _This_ was more like the woman who had tsked over Dora's hair whilst patting it affectionately at the same time.

"Teddy seems to be sleeping longer than usual," she remarked. "But I appreciate it. I never get to really enjoy a shower any more. Every little noise I hear…I used to hold off until Ted got home when Dora was little, she used to get into such mischief."

Charlie smiled. "That she did."

He turned on the faucet to demonstrate the success of his endeavor, and she tried unsuccessfully to brush at the dark, rusty stain on his shirt with a towel, finally saying, "I can't send you home to your mother like that, dear. Let me at least wash it for you."

Charlie was in no mood to rush home, so he agreed, getting ready to yank off the shirt unselfconsciously. Andromeda stopped him. "No, let me get you something to wear in the meantime. I don't think you'll quite fit anything of Remus' but I might be able to dig up something of Ted's."

When she disappeared, Charlie looked out the window in search of the woodpile, and when she returned with a crisp, pale blue shirt, he set it aside. "Just gonna get it dirty chopping wood. Maybe later, right? Might as well get on with it."

She nodded in response, and he spent the next thirty minutes happily engrossed in physical labor. It really had been just the thing to work out his frustration, and the pile of firewood was oddly satisfying to look at. Once he had it stacked by the back door, he returned to the living room, halfway through the act of tearing his damp shirt off when he noticed Andromeda on the sofa, a book opened on her lap and an extremely vivid infant doing his best to tear at the pages. Andromeda was staring at him, open-mouthed, and he figured she was worried about him tracking mud on her clean floors. "I'll just…let me clean up a bit and change shirts, I'll bring this one back to you next time."

"Keep it," she said, and he had to strain a bit to hear her. "No one's in any hurry to get it back, and it—it matches your eyes anyway. It matched Ted's too, though he never got the chance to wear it. I suppose what I mean is that it's better it goes to you than sitting around here. But you'd probably think it was a bit old-fashioned."

"No," Charlie replied, wondering when he'd ever heard her say so much at once. "It's just the sort of thing Mum wishes I'd wear to Sunday dinner."

Andromeda rolled her eyes a bit and laughed, which didn't make a lot of sense to Charlie, but he was a bit embarrassed to be standing there all sweaty and filthy when she managed to make even a spit-covered jumper look elegant. Although he suspected it was probably cashmere or silk or some such posh thing.

He felt better when he returned, not quite her equal, but not a rough laborer any more, and it hit him what it was that had changed between them. All of a sudden, he'd stopped thinking of her as his friend's mother and started thinking of her as a regular person, but when he did that, at least after she'd washed away some of the exhaustion in her face, it must've hit him that she was in a class far beyond him. Charlie had never believed in all that class rubbish, but when someone carried themselves with natural grace and confidence, it could be bloody well intimidating.

He wanted to just leave and give her her privacy, but the baby in her lap caught his attention, and he felt the need to at least introduce himself. After all, he _did_ plan on going back, and perhaps the tyke would respond better to a relative stranger taking him from his crib on some future occasion if he looked vaguely familiar.

"Hullo mate," he said, squatting down on his haunches and offering up a finger for grabbing purposes.

"You look like your mum, I think," he said. "The shape of your face, anyway."

"He's got Remus' eyes," Andromeda added. "And Ted's smile."

Charlie wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, she might have taken comfort in knowing that bits of them were living on, but on the other hand, the constant reminders would have to be painful. And then he wondered what he was doing, here, thinking _he _of all people had an obligation to help her through something unendurable.

Maybe it was just that he thought _someone_should. He didn't know why she was coping alone right now. Maybe she'd pushed away everyone because of pride or a desire for independence. Maybe the scope of her tragedy was too much for people to deal with, they didn't know what to say to make it better. Maybe the facts that her husband was Muggle born and her son-in-law was a werewolf made her something less of a sympathetic figure. After all, there were still those in the Ministry who felt that someone—even a war hero—was less worthy of honor for having married and made a baby with a dark creature.

He determined then and there to help her whether she liked it or not. "So, er, I was thinking that maybe one of these days if you'd like to get away for a few hours, I'd come and hang out with Teddy."

"I don't think-"

He shushed her. "Tonks would have definitely taken advantage of me, if she was still around. I've not stopped being her friend just because she's dead, right? And besides, when I first got here, you looked like hell. I've seen that look before on Mum. It can't have been easy taking care of seven of us, especially the little ones. I know sometimes my dad would send her off for a few hours to shop or have her hair done or who knows what—maybe even sleep on a park bench, and she'd come back a different person. More patient, definitely. So it's better for him, too, right?"

"I suppose you're right," she conceded. "Well…Tuesday would be lovely, if you're free."

"I'll be back," he promised, touching the baby's bright hair affectionately. Unable to resist the impulse, he stroked Andromeda's cheek lightly afterward. She flinched at the touch, but he tried not to take it personally. It had been stepping over the line, he supposed, but he was certain it had been an innocent gesture on his end.

Murmuring an apology, he got up to leave. "You might want to think about what I said, too. About doing things around the house, I mean. I don't mean to imply that you can't do it yourself, but if you don't have to…"

Andromeda followed him to the door, and just before she closed it, he caught her touching her cheek where his hand had been. _Probably can't wait to wash her face, he thought,_ even though he knew it was probably an unjust assessment. She wasn't a snob, even if she'd been brought up as one. Maybe she'd just got used to not being touched. Or maybe she was sick of being touched because she always had a baby in her arms.

Anyway, it probably _had _been inappropriate and it sure as hell wasn't something he was going to do again. She'd smelled really nice, though.


	2. Chapter 2

Tuesday hadn't come soon enough for Charlie, and wasn't that the strangest thing? Likely because Friday had been utterly miserable, with mum finally losing it and spending the afternoon locked in the attic with Fred's tattered baby blanket. Saturday had been awkward, with Angelina coming by to pick up the broomstick Fred had left for her. Sunday hadn't been half bad, though everybody knew that the number of chairs at the dinner table was off balance, in spite of the fact that adding Harry, Hermione, Fleur and Lee to the group made it an even number.

But Monday—that was the worst of all, because George took off without telling anyone where he was going. For a good six hours, everybody patted Mum's hands and came up with a million things that he might be doing—and really, wasn't it to be expected to think that he might just need to get away and be alone for a bit?  
Of course, everyone was _really_ thinking that George never,_ ever_ wanted to be alone and that maybe George had decided that Fred was probably having a hell of a lot more fun wherever he was.

When he returned, Mum didn't even have the heart to berate him for worrying her, which was worrying in itself, as far as Charlie was concerned, and he'd had a bad night sleep that couldn't entirely be blamed on the fact that he'd outgrown his childhood bed years ago and couldn't be bothered working out how to widen it.

Plus, the house was noisy and disorganized, and the thought of a few hours in a place with actual usable worktop space and a chair that you didn't have to rid of boots or books or knitting before you could drop down on it had undeniable appeal, even if it came with a squalling infant. Infants were easy enough to pacify, Charlie remembered. It was just a matter of working out what they wanted—or failing that, throwing them up in the air and distracting them. At least _their_ problems had workable solutions, which was infinitely preferable to sitting around looking at your empty shell of a brother and knowing there wasn't a damn thing you could do to help him.

Charlie was looking forward to seeing Dora's mum again, too, if only to work out how she managed to live through three losses with so much grace and dignity when he was an unholy mess after only one (or two, when you counted Dora.) Or maybe he was just looking forward to talking to someone who didn't know what a fucking miracle Fred had been, and how the world was so much worse off without him.

He'd thought about wearing her husband's shirt for a moment, and only because it was the nicest one he had. But that might well have dampened the smile on her face, and he didn't want to do that, so he dug up the next best thing—his standby for the rare times he got to head off to Bucharest for a night of pub crawling and socialization with the fairer sex.

It made him feel slightly less awkward this time when he stood at her door—knowing that he at least looked respectable and not so much like a camp rat. Why he cared to make a good impression, he didn't know, but he decided to chalk it up to respect for her and love for her daughter,

She had a ready smile for him this time and gave him a warm welcome as she let him in, but closer examination (once she finally met his eyes for a moment) revealed that maybe she'd had as bad a weekend as he had. Not that she looked bad—in fact, she looked...well, she was a beautiful woman, and it was obvious that she'd taken some care in her appearance today, (a date, maybe?) but her eyes seemed even more haunted than the last time.

"You're right on time," she said, as he thrust his hands in his pockets and shifted on his feet.

"Yeah, I-" Was desperate to get out of the house? That wouldn't do at all, would it? "Dora always said you valued punctuality. Well, not exactly in those words, you know. It was more like, 'bugger, bugger, _bugger,_ I'm so late and Mum's going to kill me' sort of thing…" he said, and trailed off, realizing that not only was it disrespectful to be swearing in front of your friend's parents, but she probably didn't want to hear about Dora's famously foul moth, and for that matter, she probably didn't really want Dora brought up at all, did she?

However, she laughed and reached out to pat his shoulder, then apparently changed her mind, turning away from the door. "Teddy gave me a bad night last night, but he's had one nap and will be ready for another in just about an hour. I've just fed him, but if you give him a bottle and hold him a bit, he'll probably fall asleep easily enough. If you want to wait, though, that's perfectly fine. I don't expect to be long. I have plans for lunch and then I wanted to pick up something in London for my mother-in-law's birthday."

"Right," he said, wondering how she'd explained the events of the last year to a Muggle. Maybe someday he'd ask. "Take your time, really. I'll be all right. And if all else fails, I could always floo Mum, though that might bring you all sorts of help you weren't planning on."

Andromeda laughed. "I rather expect that will be what Harry might do the first time I let him take Teddy for the day. I've never witnessed someone so terrified of babies."

Charlie started at that, remembering a bit late that someone had told him Harry was the kid's godfather. Once again, he wondered if he was overstepping the bounds of his friendship with Dora by doing this. But Mrs. Tonks had taken him up on it, hadn't she?

"Still," she added, possibly reading his mind (well, Dora had always been convinced she could do it, hadn't she?) "I'm quite sure you'll be all right."

"Reckon so," he said, and smiled.

After a cough, she turned again toward the back of the house. "I suppose you ought to come and meet him again. Perhaps if you play with him, I can just slip away, and he might not notice I've left."

Charlie nodded and followed her as he turned toward the sitting room. "Sounds like a plan."

"You know," she said as she walked; "I think he liked you. His hair was red for hours after you left."

Charlie stopped in his tracks for a moment. "That's…brilliant. I mean, _wow._ I didn't know he could change it at will. This young, I mean."

"I often wondered how other mothers were able to tell what their children were feeling. With Nymphadora, it was always so obvious. Which made her 'black' period when she was fifteen a bit tiring, but I'm told that it could have been worse. No piercings or mutilation, at least."

Charlie nodded, thinking of the…well, _brown_ period he'd heard about. When he'd finally seen it for himself, he very nearly didn't recognize her.

They found the baby laid out on the floor, kicking and gurgling, mesmerized by a miniature solar system floating just beyond the reach of its chubby fingers. Charlie's mum used to do that sort of thing with his plush dragons, but this was really far beyond that, and he was impressed. He reached out to touch it, but found that his finger went right through Jupiter as if it were one of Nearly Headless Nick's buttocks. None of that creepy cold feeling though, which was a relief. He tried to catch the baby's eye, but Teddy was following the progress of Saturn's rings and couldn't be diverted. "This is bloody brilliant."

"Ted—" Andromeda smiled and looked away. "He worked out how to do it when Nymphadora was a baby. She liked the rainbows best, but this one seems to be Teddy's favorite. Perhaps he'll be an astronomer when he grows up.

The baby squirmed a bit and whined, then caught sight of Charlie and grinned, waving his clenched fist in Charlie's direction.

"See, I told you he liked you," she said. Charlie offered up a finger and the baby grabbed on to it, cooing and gurgling. He felt a bit uncomfortable under Andromeda's watchful eye, but started making faces that got more smiles, and eventually she caught his eye and nodded toward the door.

He waved her off and pulled the baby onto his lap, letting Teddy chew on his knuckle and attempt to reach his hair with grasping fingers. Just like riding a broomstick, Charlie supposed. It eventually comes back, and he was sure as hell less trouble than a baby Horntail, right?

Playing with the kid had been good for him, Charlie reckoned. Distracting, anyway, and that was the whole point. He carried him around the house, but didn't find much work that needed doing. It was a warm and breezy day, and in Charlie's opinion, it was a crime to stay indoors. Perfect day for a match, but as that wasn't going to happen so he decided he could just as easily play with the baby inside as out.

After looking around the back garden, he took one of Mrs. Tonks' deck chairs and transfigured it into a hammock of sorts, carefully laying the baby inside where he could watch the clouds roll by and listen to the leaves rustling in the trees. Teddy seemed to be enjoying himself, so Charlie set the hammock to rocking and got started cutting the lawn. After that, there were weeds to be pulled, a dry patch that needed watering, and a pair of fornicating garden gnomes to be chased off.

At this point the baby started getting fussy, so Charlie hoisted him on his shoulder and took him back into the kitchen to find the bottle he'd heard tell of. And that was where things started to get difficult, because when he took Teddy back into his room and tried to lay him in the cradle, he screamed. When Charlie tried to sit in the rocking chair and feed him that way, he screamed again. The only thing that worked was carrying him outside, so he fed him in a deck chair, trying to bounce him to sleep. Once the bottle was done, the baby was burped and rubbing at his eyes, but he was still fighting him every step of the way. Eventually, Charlie opted to enlarge the hammock and climbed in with the baby in his arms, setting the pair of them to rocking.

When Andromeda returned (after a few moments of panic at the empty house) she found them asleep like that.

Charlie awakened to find Tonks' mum reclining on a second lawn chair, apparently taking advantage of the panoramic view of the valley below them. She'd set up a tea service on a nearby table.

"Sorry," he said. "Reckon I was more exhausted than I thought."

He'd startled her from a reverie, apparently, for she turned quickly, trying to be discreet as she dabbed at her eye.

"Oh, no, Charlie, don't apologise. I'll bet he loved that. Remus could calm him like no one else, and you reminded me of him, there, asleep like that. That's just what he would do on the sofa closest to the fire, the pair of them all bundled up and peaceful."

He didn't know if the tears were a result of her lunch date, or if being reminded of her late son-in-law had done it, but he stifled the second apology that was on his lips. If there was one thing he was sick of it was meaningless apologies. Instead, he did his best to wriggle out from under the baby, who gave him a moment of panic as he seemed to awaken in protest, but by keeping the hammock in motion and his body in contact with the baby for as long as possible, he managed to get free.

She'd begun to get up herself but he motioned her back down. "There's tea," she whispered, pointing toward the table. She'd got out different china from the last time, green and gold and finer, more delicate than before. He wondered if it was a gesture of gratitude or a reminder that in spite of the fact that she'd given him run of her house, he really was in essence a guest; a distant acquaintance.

He changed his mind when he saw the spice cake she'd set out, and picked up a slice, murmuring his thanks even as he sat down next to her and took a bite.

"That's heaven, that is," he said just as soon as he swallowed.

She actually blushed a bit at that, and he found it strangely endearing to know that she was susceptible to flattery after all.

"I found something over the weekend," she said, and picked up a leather-bound photograph album from her lap, opening it up toward the middle and handing it to him. He was a little startled to discover his own face staring back at him, and when his younger self made a face and stuck his tongue out, he choked back laughter. There was Dora, too, sitting next to him on a picnic blanket, a pair of brooms on the lawn next to her feet. They might well have been sitting in this very spot—there were the trees he'd hung the hammock on, a bit shorter but still recognizable. Tonks crossed her eyes for the person behind the camera, then held her breath and made her nose extend just like the wooden boy from that muggle fairy tale.

He touched the photograph, his chest constricting and his eyes going prickly. "She really was brilliant, wasn't she?"

Andromeda sighed and smiled. "Very special. Too special for this world, apparently. I'd like to hope, Charlie, that some day you might be able to help Teddy see her the way you saw her. He'll have Harry, of course, but he'd know more about Remus, I suspect."

"I will," he said, and meant it. "May I…?" he gestured at the album, and when she nodded, he started at the beginning. There were several black and white motionless photos of a fair haired, red faced, stocky little boy that had to have been Ted, then a couple of Wizarding photographs, solemnly posed of a pair of beautiful little dark haired girls, and then another where they were joined by a third, with hair so fair it looked silver. There were photographs of an apparently hastily planned wedding, one of them in front of this very house, and then Tonks as a baby.

When he got to this point, Andromeda pulled her chair closer and explained what he was looking at, and though it should have been morbid to be discussing the dead, he found himself laughing as she recounted some of her daughter's and her husband's more memorable antics.

"This was such a happy house," she said after a point. "I know it's hard to imagine right now, but it was just what I'd always dreamed of. My family…well, there was laughter, but it usually came with dire reminders of the proper behaviour expected of a Black. I remember Ted seemed such a breath of fresh air—it was so easy to love him—all he ever wanted was to make me and everyone else around him smile.

Charlie squirmed in his seat, thinking that she could very well be talking about Fred and wondering if she wanted him to talk about his loss, wondering if he should just lean over and give her a hug. That's what Mum would have done under the circumstances, but he didn't have that sort of relationship with Tonks's mum. The one time he _had_ touched her, she'd seemed shocked and he'd felt uncomfortable.

When that lower lip of hers had just begun to wobble, she bit down on it and tried to compose her face, and Charlie decided to sod it all and just go for it. Sure enough, Andromeda stiffened, but before he could pull away, she'd leaned into his shoulder and exhaled, making him automatically tighten his embrace in reassurance. He tried to think of something inspiring to say, but came up blank. Nothing he could say could possibly change what had happened to her, but apparently the physical gesture helped, so why bother saying anything at all? He just let her stay there, pretending that she was Ginny that time he'd been in charge of her and she'd scraped her knee, though admittedly Ginny had sobbed and soaked his shirt.

Andromeda, on the other hand, was silent, and if there were tears, she wasn't letting him see them. He could feel her shaking n his arms, though. Eventually, she pulled away and exhaled once more, wiping at her eyes.

"Thank you, Charlie," she said, and before he could wave off her gratitude, she continued. "Thank you for giving me the chance to visit my friend today without all the distractions, and thank you for listening. And more than anything, thank you for thinking of me, remembering me, period. It means a lot."

He swallowed the lump in his throat, not certain how to respond. "I thought somebody should have," he finally said, and when she bit her lip and turned away, he reached out to place a hand on her shoulder, if only for a moment. "So, next Tuesday, then?"

Andromeda nodded. "That would be lovely."


End file.
